If you're looking to keep up with "all things Web 2.0," and realize that the concept is not about recreating the wheel - at all - then head on over to Emily Chang's eHub. It's a staggering listing of apps, resources, and other tools and listings that will surely change the way the Web is seen, utilized, and embedded even further into our daily lives.
Over at Micro Persuasion, Steve Rubel cites a few examples of audio becoming more and more prevalent on the Web as a welcome change. Time seems to be the deciding factor in what should or should not be transferred from audio to text or vice versa. One of the main reasons blogging grabbed so many eyeballs was the speed in which it could be created as well as digested. On the other hand, you can't always read things all day long, so audio comes in handy while driving in your car or taking mass transit. People will have their preferences, but we have to keep one thing in mind - choice. Offering both audio and textual delivery of your content is great if it makes sense, but don't create podcasts of your blog entries just because you can.
Rashmi Sinha provides some thoughts as to what's with the whole tagging epidemic - and I use 'epidemic' in the nicest possible way. She provides an excellent analysis of how we "tag" things in our everyday lives, and how that applies to using that skill on the Web. What's great is that I found this entry while using del.icio.us, which is full of tagged links to everything and anything you might be interested in, and as I'm posting this I've put it in the newly formed "tagging" category here on my blog, but I'm not limited to doing just that. I could put it into "theory" or "Web 2.0" or any number of categories on my site, or any other site like del.icio.us that I chose to post it on.
Categorizing content, news, information, whatever, through the form of links is so easy. It's not like when you are recycling your cans and bottles at home, and you have one container that says "glass" and another that says "green glass" - leaving you to wonder what to do with the green bottle of beer in your hand - as you only have one choice. With tagging, the "error" is probably only limited to putting something in one bucket. You give people who might think differently than you do the same opportunity to find a link that you found interesting, even if they don't think "tagging" is the tag to look under.
[via del.icio.us / axa1981]
On Friday morning, CNET News.com's Dawn Kawamoto wrote about SAP's headfirst dive in with a big chunk of the $4 million in capital investment for Socialtext, the wiki software firm. If anyone was still holding out on whether the wiki was a strong tool for business use before, then this should most certainly be the wake-up call that they were looking for. Anything that makes collaboration and information sharing easier and faster is a no brainer in my book. Organizations are using wiki for everything from corporate Intranets to brainstorming parking lots and beyond, and the $850k that SAP put into the kitty is proof positive that the technology - and whatever it ultimately evolves into - is here to stay for a while.